AUSTIN, Texas — The first and only female rabbi-cantor senior police chaplain in the country was pinned by Austin Police Department Chief Joseph Chacon on Monday.
Rabbi-Cantor Marie Betcher has served with the Cedar Park police and fire departments, in addition to the APD. She became an ordained cantor in 1999 from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City and was ordained a rabbi in 2011. She has served reform and conservative congregations across the country, gaining a wide and varied experience throughout her pulpit career.
Betcher said the senior chaplain role isn't typically a job rabbis would go into.
"It's an honor and it's like, 10 years in the making. Many women – there are some wonderful women chaplains, police chaplains. It's not something that rabbis would normally go into. I do know some wonderful male rabbis that are in two different, you know, parts of in the country. But for a female rabbi – and I'm also an ordained rabbi and a cantor through Hebrew Union College in New York," Betcher said.
Betcher, an Indiana University School of Music and Florida State graduate, said she had a feeling of attachment to the men and women who serve and their families after watching her husband of 40-plus years, Jonathan Betcher, become a senior police officer with APD.
"I was well-versed with ride out, seeing what policemen do, working with people who had passed. So it was sort of a natural thing when I was asked 10 years ago to come on board as a chaplain," Betcher said.
Chaplains are ministered to take care of officers and their families, as well as non-sworn staff. Betcher said they do hospital and home visits and have to officiate funerals when the situation presents itself, but they're also involved in marrying couples and naming babies.
Betcher is a member of the Chamber of Commerce in Cedar Park, does invocations at the Rotary Club and speaks at the University of Texas at Austin to try and educate people about all the joyful things her job entails – even blessing animals, including police K9s.
"I really do a lot of interfaith work in the community. I really work on inclusiveness when I pray in my invocations, wherever I'm giving them. So, usually, I just carry on the the things that we are taught in the Bible, in the Torah, in our scriptures: to love one another as yourself," Betcher said. "So it's a no brainer. It's what you do as a Jew."
Betcher said her goal is to give her chaplains a lot of joy and hope.
"I'm not saying there are zero challenges, as every female would know. But we're different, obviously, than our male counterparts. We approach things differently. I was blessed to have chiefs of police who supported me being there and supported their chaplains. That's the other thing that's very important," Betcher said.
Betcher's pinning ceremony took place at 8 a.m. Monday at the main APD station.